


Blood Stained String

by zeldaluvr1



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Humanstuck, i don't know how to write summaries or make titles
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-26
Updated: 2013-02-27
Packaged: 2017-12-03 18:10:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/701154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeldaluvr1/pseuds/zeldaluvr1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hi, my name is Eridan Ampora, and I was haunted by the ghost of my dead best friend for a month. I've done a lot of things I'm not particularly proud of and a lot more things I'm outright ashamed of. This is the story of how I redeemed myself. Don't worry, this one has a happy ending. Sort of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Don't Say Goodbye

**Author's Note:**

> Wow hello, this is my first work on AO3. It's in a POV I've never written in, and uh... Like/comment/subscribe/enjoy? A combination of all 4?

I think it was my fault that Fef died. I’m going to go to my grave believing that, probably. Whenever I tell people I blame myself, they always jump to my defense and try to reassure me with stuff like, “But Eri, you were just a kid!” “But Eri, you couldn’t have known it’d happen!” And I think that’s total one-hundred percent bullshit. I was an awful person, no matter if I was two or twenty-two. And either way, just because I didn’t know that the accident would happen, it doesn’t mean it wasn’t my fault.

Wow, I am an absolute shit story teller. Let’s try this again.

Hi, my name is Eridan Ampora, and in case I haven’t rambled enough up there for you to pick it up, let me make my crime clear. I am directly responsible for the death of the light of my life.

Fef and I – Feferi Peixes, that is – grew up like we were joined at the hip. Went to the same school, lived on the same street – hell, we even ate out of the same lunch box. She was such a sweet thing. I used to think she was an angel, because she was so pretty and kind to everyone she knew. And, yeah, she was kind of ditzy, too. I swear, 99% of the time her mind was completely somewhere else. She was a weird girl, but I loved her. Even at that age, when I don’t even think I knew what marriage meant, I knew she was the girl I wanted to spend my whole life with. Matter of fact, the two of us made a vow of sorts. There was a church we lived by, on Akaito Street if I recall the name correctly, and one day, on our way home from school, the two of us promised to go back there one day and get married. Back then, the church bells were still ringing out the hour, but they’ve since been silenced.

Okay, I kind of digressed a little, but that part’s important later in the story, I promise.

Like I said earlier, Fef and I did everything together. I’m trying to think of something we didn’t do together and literally nothing comes to mind. (Except using the bathroom, I guess.) Included in the list of things we did together was walking home after school. Now, remember what I said about her being sort of a bubblehead? I mean, she wasn’t stupid at all, she was just kind of thoughtless sometimes. Whenever we would cross a street, I always had to remind her to look both ways. Literally every single time, she never learned, even after that one time she almost got run over. It was fucking infuriating.

That’s why I blame myself, though. She needed me around to look after her. And the one time I wasn’t there to remind her to look both ways, she got run over and died.

When I was a kid, I was an insufferable little shit. I had my nose up in the air all the time and I thought I was the king of the sandbox. Someone should’ve smacked me and said, “You’re in first fucking grade, you ass!” God, don’t even get me started on Past Me. He’s the source of every single one of my fucking problems. One day, little asshole Past Me was in a shitty mood after an argument with a certain heterochromatic arch nemesis and took it out on Fef after school. I kind of did that often, I’m ashamed to say. I don’t even remember what we were arguing about – all I remember was that I made her cry and I turned and went home without her. What were my last words to her? Just trying to remember what happened is tearing me apart.

I didn’t hear she died until the next day. It was a Saturday afternoon. Fef and I always went to the park on Saturday afternoons. Eager to hear her apology (I fucking hate Past Me), I made my way over, knocked on the door, and her mom answered and told me the news.  
The fucking prick I was immediately blamed everyone except himself. Myself. Whatever. I remember blaming Fef first. I remember cursing her name for leaving me like that, for being too stupid to look both ways before crossing the fucking street. And then I blamed pretty much everyone else. Her mom for raising a brainless child, my dad for never once picking us up from school, the school for not offering a day care service, and the driver. Holy shit did I lay into the driver. It didn’t take me long to find out who the driver’s kid was, and I completely ruined him, too.

I was just covering up, though, because I knew it was my fault more than anything. I was just hiding my agonizing guilt behind blind rage. It’s easier to be angry, after all.

At the funeral, I stole something from her body. A bracelet I made for her. I still wear it to this day, and I’m kind of amazed it hasn’t worn down to nothing yet. I snapped it 3 times already, despite how I’m always so careful in handling it. It was white when I gave it to her, but it turned red with her blood. Kind of morbid, I guess, but I don’t care. It’s mine. Fight me.

Fef was my first, last, and only friend. After she died, I just became more and more bitter and hateful and angry. I never forgot her, I never forgave myself, and I never got close to anyone else after she was gone. 

And that self-destructive path is probably what made her come back.


	2. Wrath

From what I remember, Sollux Captor was a weird kid. I vividly remember disliking him, that's for sure, even before the accident. Put two arrogant assholes in the same playground together and you will see some sparks fly. I never outright picked on him or anything, but after Fef died, that changed pretty fucking fast.

His dad was the driver.

The cost of taking a life left Sol's family in financial ruin, but knowing that wasn't enough for me. I bullied him relentlessly throughout elementary and middle school. No one ever defended him - who's going to save the son of child killer? - and he never even defended himself. There was never any incentive or danger of reprimand to make me stop, so I never did. Not until he lost his house and had to move to another state. In hindsight, I feel fucking terrible about what I did to him. It was my fault she died and he didn't have anything to do with it. But in the moment, I won't deny it felt fan-fucking-tastic to have so much power over someone. To take my empty revenge on a blameless victim. It's sickening, isn't it? Glad I got out of that hole.

The last thing he ever said to me - while we were in grade school, that is - was that he was sorry for what happened, and that he knew I was hurting, and that it was okay to feel sad. I am never going to forget that as long as I live. It even made me cry, amazingly enough. It was the first and only time I had ever cried about Fef's death.

I graduated high school with the highest honors and I got a full ride for college, where I majored in chemistry and went on to be a professor there. I never had to worry about money or a job in my life. The Ampora name is a wealthy and well-connected one, and it wasn't long before I became the posterchild of "rich, white, elite male." I did pretty well for myself. Nice house, nice car, nice job... but I wasn't a nice person.

One day, Sollux Captor himself walked into my class. And what happened next is probably what made Fef come back.

It felt like time stopped when I recognized him. He was keeping his head down as he entered in a meek attempt at hiding his identity, but it didn't work for a god damn minute. I'm pretty sure I was grinning from ear to ear when our eyes met, and I clearly remember the color draining from his face.

If you're wondering for even a second if I called him out in front of the class, I must not have done a good job in emphasizing how awful I was.

"Mister Captor!" I called to him the moment the class quieted. I told everyone, "He and I used to go to grade school together. How is your father doing?"

"My dad's dead," he said in a quiet voice. A normal person would have left it at that, but I asked how it happened, and he continued, "He was working on a construction project and a beam snapped and he got crushed."

I said back to him, "Well that's fascinating! And how did it make you feel to have someone you love suddenly and violently torn out of your life due to the incompetence of others?" He told me to stop, but I didn't. I was enjoying myself too much, and it was obvious that I was getting to him.

After telling the class of his father's crime, I believe I went on a rant about how "justice is beautiful" for the next 10 minutes or something. It started getting a little too preachy for a science class, I think, but the rest of the class continued without incident. Sol couldn't have ducked out faster. I let him leave, but the flames of my wrath had not yet been sated, and I set out in search of ways to utterly ruin him.

I learned that Sol was going to college on very tentative conditions. His orphaning gave him very little from life insurance, but his high grades and incredible ACT and SAT scores gave him enough money in scholarships to go to college - in combination with an income from holding down two jobs and enough student loans to put him in debt for the rest of his natural life. Looking back at how shitty a hand life had dealt him, his is actually a rather remarkable success story.

It took me a month to destroy everything he'd worked for.

All it took to get him fired was a few gold coins tossed at the feet of his bosses, and they eagerly found some reason to get rid of him. After his income was stopped, everything else slowly began to unravel. He had to rely on the generosity of his friends to hold him up and feed and house him, and while he eventually found another job, the damage was done. That doesn't mean I didn't get him fired from that one, too. He managed to keep his head above water and his ass in school just long enough for me to hand him a failing grade on his midterm.

The absolutely crushed expression he had at failing his class didn't stop me from telling everything I'd done to him. He looked horrified, like I was some sort of monster. He was probably right, because at the time, I had never been happier. That's the first time he ever tried to strike back for all the damage I caused him, and holy shit, he kicked my ass. But the police were called and on top of everything else that had happened to him, he spent a little time in jail, too. I was already on the phone with the best lawyer in town as he was getting shoved into the patrol car.

I didn't lose a wink of sleep over it. I'd say I slept better than I ever had before. I was proud of myself, for "handing to him what he deserved."

All I can say is, thank god Fef was there to snap me out of it.


End file.
